Hypoxis hygrometrica var. hygrometrica

Golden Weather-grass at Brogo, NSW

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Identification history

	Hypoxis hygrometrica var. hygrometrica	3 Jan 2017	BettyDonWood
	Unidentified	3 Jan 2017	CCPK

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User's notes

Grows on grassy open slopes towards Brogo River

16 comments

JackieMiles wrote:

4 Jan 2017

I ID'd a shot of this species this morning. This is getting a tad repetitive. Can I suggest you have a good look thru your photos for duplicates before you put any more up? I've just done 3 sightings of angophora and 2 of Pittosporum, 2 of Crowea. A bit of self discipline called for here. Betty and I do have other things to do you know.

BettyDonWood wrote:

4 Jan 2017

It presume var. villosisepala does not occur at Brogo. The photo is not good enough to show the anthers. A sideways view is another way to determine if the sepals are hairy, as they are in villosisepala.

JackieMiles wrote:

4 Jan 2017

Yeah, I've only ever seen ssp hygrometrica on the coast (splendida in the escarpment bogs).

BettyDonWood wrote:

4 Jan 2017

While Jackie has been handling this flood of sightings I have been dealing with sightings from four other people on CNM. Could you ration yourself to uploading a maximum of about 20 sightings a day in future. There is no need to upload a year's worth of sightings in a day. The most sightings in a day I have ever handled before was about 90 in the spring rush and that was mostly excellent quality sightings and from multiple people.

JackieMiles wrote:

4 Jan 2017

Hear, hear. I'm getting off the computer now and I don't want to find another s..tload of photos on it in the morning!

CCPK wrote:

4 Jan 2017

Sorry everyone! I've been meaning to upload photos for ages and have just had a bit of time to do so. I promise I'm done now! No more photos coming. A big thanks to everyone for ID'ing the flora and fauna.

ArcherCallaway wrote:

4 Jan 2017

Sorry to butt in but I saw this discussion and have a few things to add. I will split it into a few comments due to character limits.
Betty may remember when I first started CNM. I didn't know anything about plants, and plants were the only group that CNM was taking reports of. Sticky Everlasting, Aaron's Rod, St John's Wort, repeat. We get people of a broad level of skill levels through this site, from those who have worked with plants for years and can spot what is of particular conservation significance to nature lovers who are just starting out. One thing that I do know is that takes more than one confirmation for IDs to start sinking in. Everything I know now about plants is thanks to your confirmations and comments on CNM, and while I still have a long way to go, I have already learnt way more than I ever knew there was to learn and I am really thankful for that. So, in regards to some repetition, it is part of the learning process and inevitable. I had a look at CCPK's Hypoxis reports- they are far apart enough and I would not regard them as duplicates. While this may not be as much of a species of high interest, if I was reporting, say Sun Orchids, I would report every single one separately, or finger orchids if they were abundant every few dozen metres. Also, since plants flower at different times of the year, it is again likely to get many of the same plant at one time, but then you may not get any reports for another year.

ArcherCallaway wrote:

4 Jan 2017

In regards to the number of reports per day, from a contributor's perspective, it is NOT viable to report 20 a day. I am 2 and a half months behind in uploading sightings, and when I upload lots at a time sometimes I catch up slightly but at the moment I am falling slowly behind, because whenever I have time I'm usually out taking more photos. It takes a lot of your time to upload sightings- I either have to go and make copies of every photo and resize them for a faster upload, or wait for a slow upload. I can't upload more than several photos at a time, because otherwise the uploads time out and I have to start again. I try and suggest the species whenever I think I know to make the moderator's job just a bit easier, but I can't open other CNM pages to check what ID I want to suggest while photos are uploading, nor can I select stuff in the dropdown boxes until uploads are complete, as uploading takes up all of CNM's loading power (or whatever its called). It is a big job uploading, and if I find a big enough chunk of time, I have to upload as many as I can. I don't have the time to be uploading 20 a day, nor should I have to limit myself to 20 when I find the time, as that would just put me under more pressure when trying to catch up. Sometimes, photos are particularly concentrated on one species group- I might have had a good day for finding orchids, I may have been in the middle of a mass butterfly migration, I may have been at a pond photographing damselflies and dragonflies, or surveying for frogs at night. Again, this makes it inevitable that sometimes a particular moderator or a group of moderators get a big workload. The only way I can keep track of what I've uploaded is to do everything in order.

ArcherCallaway wrote:

4 Jan 2017

I'm a moderator for birds (primarily on CNM), so I can see where you are coming from, and especially with plants, you seem to get much more reports. I come on one afternoon quite recently and I'd gotten about 70 or so bird sightings aver a few hours. However, we as moderators have no obligation to deal with all those immediately. If you have other things that need doing, do them. If you want to deal with 20 sightings a day, then go for it, deal with 20 and leave the rest for another time. I am one to try and do everything as it comes. Others come on just once a week or fortnight, and deal with all the sightings in one go. Just do it in a way that suits you. I think this is a good discussion to have, with the influx of reporters and the resulting workload. What is important is that regardless of skill level, we ALWAYS remain encouraging- every contributor's reports are valuable, and the moderator's role is not only to monitor data quality, it to support them on a learning curve of their lifelong journey for knowledge, and a better understanding of the environment. Better yet, if you support them enough, one day they will be helping you moderate :)

JackieMiles wrote:

4 Jan 2017

Hi Ryu, All very well only dealing with 20 per day if you can be confident another 80 are not going to come in the next day! But I think my comment about photo quality holds. There's no point sticking up really lousy out of focus shots, or ones with multiple species in them. You might get a name out of the exercise if you're lucky, but they don't do much for the quality of the website. And I would say putting up one occurrence of each species per property is quite sufficient! Maybe another shot the following growing season for things like orchids that vary over time.

ArcherCallaway wrote:

4 Jan 2017

If too many sightings build up from dealing with 20 per day than that is a separate issue to be discussed- perhaps try and get more people on board to help moderate etc. The thing is the whole purpose of the site as I understand it is to get more people interested in the environment and spread the love for the environment, while getting a better understanding of the region. Comments that don't have a positive note can discourage people or turn them away, which defeats the whole purpose. ALCW is bound to grow as time goes on, and workload will increase regardless- pamphlets and bioblitzes etc. ensure that, and it is an issue that will need to be addressed anyway. In the meantime, I think just do what you can comfortably handle. It is better to have a steady flow of sightings being dealt with than a moderator trying too hard and then finding they can't handle it and quitting.

ArcherCallaway wrote:

4 Jan 2017

I like to think photo quality is also something to be improved over time- I go back and look at my old photos that I thought were great at the time and they are worse than even some of my not so good photos these days. We all start somewhere, and come constructive criticism on tips to improve or tips on what features to focus on ID comes in handy- Just saying that a photo is lousy doesn't get anywhere.
I see your point about reporting too many of the same things from close by- however, my main point was that to those people that aren't too familiar with plants, you don't immediately notice that one is the same as another. There are in fact multiple similar species that you can't distinguish unless you know what to look for. I know that it takes multiple reports of the same thing to realise that that yellow flower and this yellow flower is the same, because I have reported multiple of the same from different locations in the past not imagining one was the same as the other. After multiple reports, it finally starts to sink in that a flower of this shape here and a flower of that shape there is the exact same, and you stop getting duplicate reports. It takes a bit of patience, but I think it is worth it especially because you know that someone like me has learnt so much.

ArcherCallaway wrote:

4 Jan 2017

If it is still wanted, I still have all my bioblitz sightings to put up after I catch up and the canberra sightings for the 3 weeks prior to the bioblitz. Just a heads up- many good images, but lots of them.

JackieMiles wrote:

4 Jan 2017

Well, there's a little something to look forward to. Re using the website to learn about plants, there are books out there too you know. The authors of them actually make money from them, rather than paying to educate novices as I am via my web connection costs! And that's enough of this discussion I reckon, or I'm going to start coming across as a really irascible old botanist.

ArcherCallaway wrote:

4 Jan 2017

Well luckily I don't think there are too many plants. The are a lot of sea creatures though which I know nothing about. If you don't want them I will put them on hold.

JackieMiles wrote:

5 Jan 2017

Not too many plants sounds good to me. I can't speak for the other moderators, but I do hope you will check your photo quality before uploading. and certainly resize them first if you are doing it off the computer, not the phone. Otherwise it is too tedious waiting for the photos to open. I can't say I have noticed anybody uploading overly large files so far - the one sin that hasn't been committed. Not only is it slow to open them, but it adds to the quantity of data being downloaded and hence to the internet access cost. Mine has gone thru the roof since I got involved with ALCW (which is not to say that I'm not enjoying the experience, yesterday excepted!).

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